Honeywell Unveils Lyric, a Competitor in the Smart Thermostat Race

In case you have not noticed recently, “smart home” products are the hottest thing this side of automation. Companies are literally flooding the market with gadgets, trying to build their own unique ecosystems inside of your home. It is for that reason we see things such as Honeywell’s new Lyric, a smart thermostat, that does not seem all that different from the competition based purely on aesthetics, but is in terms of useful features.

On the surface, the $279 Lyric looks like a more expensive Nest thermostat. Like Google’s Nest, it leverages geofencing to detect when people are not around, and is also configurable with a companion application. Honeywell says its ace in the hole, though, is Lyric’s Fine Tune feature, which factors indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, and weather into an algorithm that calculates an optimal home temperature. Beat that, Nest.

The company says that is a first for self-service thermostats.

You would expect any home thermostat more than $200 to have intuitive controls, and the Lyric delivers on that front. It has a touchscreen display, which allows you to perform maintenance or access weather information, plus built-in LEDs to indicate temperature adjustments are in progress. Both features power off by default, activated by the built-in proximity sensor.

Interested in picking one up? You will have to wait a while. The Lyric is available to heating and cooling contractors now, but Honeywell says it will not launch retail units until August.